Laughter comes easily to Claire Danes. That’s just as well, because when Homeland raises the veil on its third season Sunday, Danes’s character — obsessive-compulsive, bipolar CIA analyst Carrie Mathison — is torn between loyalty to a close friend and duty to her country, in the wake of a terrorist bombing that has levelled a government building in Langley, Va.

It would be easy to dismiss Showville as Waiting for Guffman: The Reality Show, or America’s Got Talent: The Cable Edition, without Howie Mandel and Howard Stern, but that would be a little mean-spirited.

Hell’s Kitchen is winding down the oven clock on its 11th season, on a new night and coming off an unusually subdued — for chef Gordon Ramsay — outing in which the remaining five cheftestants tried to impress with their signature dishes.

It’s best, when watching Hannibal for the first time, to forget Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter, Red Dragon or any number of other fine and not-so-fine movies featuring the Chianti cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, and instead think of the very first episode of CSI — or, if your memory can’t rewind that far, The Following.